It would be comforting to report that Denver really screwed up, no? Horrible traffic, cops nightsticking grannies, surly restaurant staff barking abuse, cabbies driving you to your hotel by way of Wyoming, torrential rain, bats, rumors of plague, et cetera. But no. Denver was perfect.

Curse them! Curse their long pedestrian mall lined with cafes and shops, punctuated by light rail and buses powered by soy juice and comely free-spirits doing hula-hoop routines all day, which I'm certain happens every day. (Rolling eyes.)

For all we know it was Potemkin town, and Denver is an empty husk of a city; hours before the media arrived they were shooing the feral cows off the streets, using rakes to gather the tumbleweeds, hiring underemployed actors to walk around in suits to make it seem like the town is a going concern. I mean, I tried to get into some old office buildings to take pictures of the architecture, but security wouldn't let me. Because there's nothing in there? I said. Because it's all a lie, a set, a showpiece manufactured for the media? They disagreed, but of course they would.

Oh, we'll do fine. The fact that we have a Children's Museum near the Xcel will look good. Denver didn't have one of those. Natural conclusion: Denver hates children. (Repeat that point under your breath when you're around people with media badges.)

We have two downtowns, which makes Denver look like an underachiever; people in either town could refer to the other as the "Spare Downtown." Don't you have one? Really? How interesting. We have a big river; Denver's downtown has a tiny creek. We will make our case in our own way; we will do fine.

Or we could just move everything to the fair. Change the game. Move everything to a place with rides and cows and crop art and massive exhibitions of prize-winning flax seeds, and pretend that's our downtown. It would be so utterly different from Denver that comparisons would be useless. We'd all have to play along, though. When a rumpled member of the Real Media shambles up and asks when this whole fair thing closes down, we'd have to feign confusion.

Close down? Not sure what you mean.

jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 More daily at www.startribune.com/buzz